How Does One Avoid Materialism And Still Respect Traditions, Family, Etc....?

General General Discussion
1

I’m trying to avoid becoming one of those people who ends up on shows like “Hoarders: Buried Alive.” I have quite a lot of “things” and fewer and fewer places to put them. Only unlike those who have the mental disorder that makes them keep used chopsticks for their last take out delivery and have a drawer full of spent light bulbs so far everything I keep has an explanation or logic to it.

I’d love to become something of a Buddhist and divest myself of most of my possessions and keep only those handful of things that I absolutely need but I find that idea isn’t terribly practical for me. I realize I am a prisoner of my possessions but if you need those possessions simply letting them go doesn’t really fix things either.

My problem is “things I own” > “storage space” and I don’t see myself being in a position to upgrade to a larger home any time soon. And I’ve already done the “Do I really need this?” evaluation of things in every room and sold, given or thrown away everything I really didn’t need a few times and I’m still hurt for space.

Guns, magazines, ammo and accessories are an obvious one to start with. I have something close to a reference collection. I have been collecting guns since the 4th grade and could practically reduce my collection to 1/10th of the guns I own and still feel I have my personal security needs covered. And I have toyed with the idea of selling off all of my WWI / WWII guns and related items from time to time. The inherent problem here is each one of them is directly linked to nostalgia from my childhood and a strong association with my father. I no longer have my father and my firearms are one of the few things I have from my early childhood and it would be incredibly painful for me to let go of any of these items. Virtually every single one of them is associated with a wonderful memory of going to gunshows with my Dad and his helping me research and build my collection.

Also taking up lots of space is a beer can collection I began in the mid 70s. Like my guns this is also related to powerful childhood memories of happier times. They take up a lot of wall space and when I ran out of wall space the rest took up an entire closet. But I can walk in the room look at each one and in nearly every case remember how each can came to be in my possession. And this included my father driving me around Miami from one convenience store to another while I dug in the bottom of the beer cooler looking for examples I didn’t have yet. Going on camping trips near old dumps and digging for cans from the 40s and 50s and finally returning from Europe with enough beer cans to supply a frat house for an entire weekend. He even helped me climb the fence at the Orange Bowl days after a Superbowl game so I could raid the trash cans for examples fans brought from all over the country. My father was a pretty good sport about the whole thing and it would seem insulting to his efforts to throw away the collection given all the quality time he spent with me as a kid working on it.

There is my movie library of approx. 10,000 DVDs and perhaps 500 VHS tapes that I have yet to transfer to DVD. Thankfully DVDs take up much less space than VHS tapes and I no longer have a 2,000 VHS tape movie library so that has been consolidated considerably. It does take up quite a bit of the living room but I collect movies as well as beer cans, guns, coins, vintage martial arts weapons…well you get the idea. Again, this one is tied to my father. Some of my earliest memories are being allowed to stay up late and watch Creature Feature and for those poor souls who were born too late it was a double feature on TV of classic universal horror movies from the 30/40s, UK (mostly Hammer) films from the 50/70s, American International and similar B movies from the 50s and 60s (including some excellent “men from outer space” sci fi) and a handful of Japanese Godzilla / Rodan type movies. These are still some of my favorite films of all time. And when I’m couch bound because I wrecked myself working on the house, am down with some illness, etc. my DVD library keeps me from having to watch the crap on TV while I recuperate.

I also have complete series of every TV show we watched growing up from The Six Million Dollar Man, Wild Wild West, Black Sheep Squadron, Buck Rogers, The Night Stalker, etc. I love these shows to this day because I enjoyed them so much as a kid. Small things like my father pointing out what guns people on shows like Black Sheep Squadron or The Wild, Wild West made them even more enjoyable and often directly contributed to my next firearm acquisition. I even have things like the complete James Bond set which I bought for the express purpose of watching with my father (he loved those movies) on his last trip. Sadly we didn’t watch a single one of them before he went into the hospital and now I’m not sure I can watch any of them but I can’t get rid of them because he loved them so much and we had so much fun watching them when I was a kid.

Then there are the yearbooks, baby books, photo albums and 8mm films that belonged to my father, grandfather and great grandfather. Seems I was the only one who made to effort to secure these items and save them from being thrown away. Several boxes of these things take up lots of space in my home but what choice do I have about it. I could never live with myself if I just let them get tossed after my father took the time to make sure nothing happened to them over the years.

I have made some progress. Things that had a dollar value like my Battlestar Galactica toys from 1978 found their way to ebay. I kept them for years with the intent of giving them to my children, but that never happened and at this point it seems I won’t have any kids as incomprehensible to me as that still is. Probably for the best, given my current financial situation I’d have a hard time providing for my kids and that would be intolerable to me. I still have a bunch of books about dinosaurs my father bought for me when we visited the Smithsonian in the mid 70s and I kept them all these years for the express purpose of giving them to my kids but for some reason I just can’t throw them away.

A big part of me wants to just unload 90% of everything I own, take the money and relocate to another state where things are a little “slower” and try and live a simpler life. But once I got there I’d want to read all my books, watch all my movies, look at all my beer cans, shoot all my guns and hopefully finally have the storage space for all of those family items.

It’s hard being a sentimental materialist with dreams of being a wandering Buddhist.

2

Listen, downsizing is never easy. When I broke up with my first wife, I moved most of our stuff into a storage unit. Every time I went to clean it out, I’d come across something that sparked a hear wrenching memory. It took me two years before I had the emotional energy to clear that unit out and when I was done, I discovered I was paying rent to store mostly junk. Not saying your stuff is junk, just saying I’ve been there.

What you might think about doing is going through a collection and sorting out which pieces have the greatest emotional ties for you and selling the rest. Or, if it feels more appropriate, donating the rest to a museum. When sorting, don’t just go through it once. Once you’ve got the stuff set aside that you want to keep, take a break for awhile and go through it again. Do this again and again until you’ve got the best of the best.

Ask yourself, what would your father have you do? Would he want you to be a slave to your collections? Would he want your collections to be a burden? Would he want your memories of him to be a burden? Or would he want you to do something meaningful with your collections? Judging from the impact your father had on your life, I’d say he’d want you to use those collections to bring joy and quality to your life. If that means selling a large part of it to move to a place that will bring you peace, your father would want that. You will also have a place that everytime you think of it, you’ll remember how your father helped you gather together those valuable things that let you achieve this goal.

It might also be useful to photograph the important items to archive them along with the stories of how you got them and how your father helped. Movies can be transferred to hard drives and eliminate the discs altogether. I do understand your dilemma. I live in a very small place and have to make some very hard choices about what to keep and what to let go.

Make choices that will help you grow, choices that will honor the love your father has for you. You have my best wishes in this journey

3

That’s some pretty sage advice, MistWolf.

4

Well I think I’m still in a lot of trouble.

I just went into the safe and took out the Luger my father gave me in the 4th grade and in a matter of minutes dozens of wonderful memories came flooding back to me. Then I tried to imagine not owning that Luger and I could feel the grief and distress from the idea alone.

I’m stuck in a horrible paradox, the things I might be able to part with have essentially zero value (like my beer can collection for example) and the things that have value I could never part with (like the Luger and a bunch of other firearms). And since many things have essentially zero dollar value and have only sentimental value, I’m not as motivated to part with them. If each one of my beer cans was worth $10 I’d have $20,000 pretty quickly and would just save my favorite 10.

Needless to say I’d feel even worse if I tried to sell a gun that belonged to my father or grandfather.

5

This helps get the process started! Divorce is good for downsizing for sure.

By the way, I’d get rid of 10K movies before I got rid of the Luger.

My idea about it is, if I haven’t used it in 365 days, I probably don’t need it. If I’ve forgotten I’ve own it, it needs to go. Needless to say I don’t have a lot of stuff.

6

Can I come visit?

7

Where do you draw the line, in your head, that you’re collecting and not hoarding?

Serious question. Meant to make you think about it. One sign of hoarding is that everything has some sentimental value attached to it.

Other options, do something with your stuff. Donate guns to a museum. Cut up those beer cans, grab half of it, flatten, and ‘wallpaper’ your man-cave. Start a DVD store, or better yet, sell it and buy Netflix and whatever online subscription movie service you like.

8

OK, kinda weird coincidence but maybe you oughta check out this web article: Is It Normal to Hoard? (http://nautil.us/issue/10/mergers--acquisitions/is-it-normal-to-hoard).

9

There are a few “problems” at play.

First I am the current caretaker of items my family has preserved for generations that are now in my custody. I’d feel like a damn disgrace if I let something happen to them on “my watch.” This has a lot to do with how I was raised and in my mind it is tied directly with showing respect for your loved ones after they are gone.

Second I don’t think my collections are problems. I collect by choice. My problem is one of not having room for my collections to be practical. If they can’t be displayed properly, regularly inventoried and added to then I’m not really collecting so much as just “storing” these items. And flattening out my cans would take up more wall space than simply having the cans on shelves like I do now. If I had a larger house with a basement for example the entire basement would be my beer can collection and I’d regularly add to it since prices aren’t even half of what they were 30 years ago. It would be for “fun” only because they have no monetary value.

Third my movie collection is “in use.” It’s not something that simply sits in a box someplace. I watch movies all the time and love to do “genre” marathons. DVDs, even 10,000 of them don’t take up that much space (most of them are in 100 count cake containers which take up the space of 5 VHS tapes). My book library for example takes up two to three times the space of my DVD collection and that is after I have gone through my library and sold or discarded the books that I don’t read. Selling DVDs or books is almost pointless, they are getting to the point where they have so little value people won’t pay the shipping on them if they were offered for .99 cents.

As for the guns, I’d never donate them. I’d sell them first but now is not the best market for maximum profits and the ones I might consider selling I really can’t because they have too much meaning to me.

The problem of course is I place a lot of sentimental attachments on things I can’t or don’t even use. But it’s not like I’m hoarding string or paper clips. I know a guy whose wife died and almost right after the funeral he sold her jewelry, his wedding ring and got rid of all of her possessions. He even got rid of photo albums full of pictures of them together. He explained it was his way of “letting her go.” I could never do that, I’m just not that person.

In the past few years since my father has passed I’ve done several “I don’t need and have never used this” evaluations and sold several things on ebay on gunbroker. Problem is after getting rid of the “don’t need / don’t use” items…I still have quite a bit of stuff. The only good thing is I’m on a serious budget so I’m not really adding to the pile very much in the last few years. I’ve only gotten a few things, they tend to be small items and it was mostly because the price was right.

I guess at least I don’t have walls full of deer heads like my brother.

10

Have you looked at building a media server and ripping all of those DVD’s onto it? They take up about 5 gig a piece(although some can take up to 8gig) so thats about 5 terabytes of space. You can build a box that has six 1 terabyte HD’s for under a grand. I would bet 10k DVD’s could be sold for more than that. If you need more space you can get an external HD rack to add more drives.

ETA: I think my math is faulty.

You have 50 terabytes of DVD’s. OK, thats ridiculous. Scratch the media server idea unless you want to build something like the Library of Congress has.

11

Not only that I can’t watch movies on a computer and I don’t have one set up to my TV in the living room. I also love the freedom of walking into any room in the house and dropping a DVD in the player. Additionally any hard drive can crash and if I lost my entire movie collection, or even a small part of it, I’d go completely nuts.

Also the DVDs really aren’t taking up a lot of room. They occupy the space under my TV, DVD players, etc. and a single wall of shelves in the living room. They were just an example of one of the many things I collect that I have a lot of and really need a bigger house to have this many things.

12

I’m the only child of two only children. Several great aunts did not have children and left things to me as well. All four of my grandparents and my father died inside of two years between 14-16, my step-grandfather died then as well and he also left me things. I’ve felt tremendous self-imposed pressure to keep everything as though my goal on earth is to be the curator for all of these things. As though I was the only person left to carry on their memories. Keeping things that I don’t want has nothing to do with my respect for them, my love for them, nor my ability to keep a part of them alive.

As a child running through the woods I’d play make believe and of course found sticks that were suitable as different items in my make-believe. My great grandmother kept ALL of them. I threw ALL of them away…but I did not throw away the love that made those sticks valuable to her. It may be true that we’re the curators of their memories…but that’s internal. Find the one or two things from those you’d most like to leave to your children from them, and don’t worry about the rest…those are memories that are between you and that person.

How many sets of silver does a person need? I kept the nicest two and sold a ton. I want there to be room in my life to build one that’s unique to me. When your father helped you collect those beer cans was he doing that because he cared about the cans, or because he cared about spending that time with you and helping you with something you were passionate about. Might he have been as awesome if you were into collecting funny shaped sticks? I think we know the answer is that he would have. I’m not saying to get rid of your cans, but I am saying that doing so is not getting rid of the love you shared with one another.

As to the heirlooms; we can’t hold ourselves to this standard that we must keep all of these things from all of these people. It’s not fair to ourselves, and in many cases it wasn’t the intent of giving it to you. If there are others in your family who you feel you’re taking care of these things for, then you need to make them very aware of the fact that you’re burdened and will be getting rid of some things. If they come then they can sort through what you haven’t tagged for yourself. If they don’t, then they can shut the hell up and apologize for putting you in that situation. You must give them fair warning, but if you’ve done that they have no right to whine should you get rid of absolutely everything(don’t do that.)

I get keeping the firearms and the sentiments they can carry, but we’re gun guys here.

I don’t live for my great grandparents. I live for myself…I suggest you do as well. There has to be room in our lives to create new memories, new love, and new collections with our own children.

ETA:Getting all the crap paired down to reasonable levels has taken me over a decade. It’s not easy, and sometimes I just slide the boxes back into the attic(or wherever) and deal with the rest in a few months or a year. It’s hard…but it’s rewarding.

13

Being on active duty I move a lot and always throw away stuff that accumulates. I’m at the point now that if it is not a quality item that I will use on a regular basis it was thrown away, or given to Good Will, and I don’t buy junk anymore. Even though I own nice and expensive things compared to most people I’m a minimalist. On this last move I made the decision, the root meaning of decide is too cut off, to get rid of a lot of sentimental things that I have never used and would never display, and also had no monitory value. I’ve even decided to stop buying guns, there are only two left that I “need” a 1903 Springfield and a quality over-under 12 gauge for clays and hunting.

You think you might have a problem, and maybe you do, have you tried not collecting for a period of time? Does your collecting cause money problems?

If you don’t have a problem then you need space, can you build a man cave? Could you place your can collection on the wall of your garage? You could move your DVDs to a home server.

http://www.wdc.com/en/products/business/networkstorage/

Check Pinterest for creative ways to display your collections.

14

Sheds Unlimited is your friend. Extra storage sapce, at a fraction of the cost of a new home!

15

Do you know how to eat an elephant? One bit at a time. Stop trying to eat the elephant all at once. It will only choke you.

If you simply look at the your whole collection, you’re going to feel overwhelmed. I don’t blame you, from your description, it’s HUGE. Break it down into smaller parts, then break those parts down into smaller parts. Leave aside the firearms for the moment because there is quite a bit of emotional and financial investment in it. Let’s say you start with the beer can collection. Sort it, see if any have any important value. If you want to preserve it for posterity, take photos and write each one up and turn it into a book and publish it. Maybe keep a few important cans and sell or give away the rest. I know you said the beercan collection has no value, but there must be some cans collectors want. Then move on to the next thing. Stop finding excuses and stop letting this paralyze you. From what I’ve read in your posts, you are too strong minded to let this burden you.

It’s ok to start small. Take little bites, chew thoroughly and learn how to make tasty recipes

PS- Looking at what I wrote, I realize this is advice I need to take myself!

16

Even though media server is off the table due to how large your collection is, you dont sit at the computer and watch them. You either have “smart” TV’s or “smart” blu-ray players or a little dedicated box hooked to a tv. Then the video’s just stream across your wifi(or hard wired) network to said “smart” device. I have a media server stashed in a closet in the basement, but I probably only have 300-400 DVD’s on it. I can watch said movies anywhere in the house at any time. Its a slick setup, but I dont know how large you can go i.e. if the machine could run a server rack of hard drives. I have 4, 1 terabyte drives. I also have all of my music on there about 5k songs. I havent stepped into ripping blu-rays YET because the software to decrypt them is still a little wonky and the storage space is ridiculous(50 gig on some).

Best thing about my little box is I send it with my dad in his coach when they take long trips and instead of taking a big box of DVD’s they just take the media server and he has a wifi network in his coach so you can watch movies on both of the TV’s since we installed “smart” TV’s.

17

Steyr:

I have a step son, who is a hoarder…It is gut wrenching to see him come back from yet another auction, with more “treasures” (aka junk) So far, he’s managed to fill 2 houses,(one he lives in, the other, he tore up starting “remodeling projects” that were never finished and beyond his capability’s, to the point that the house is unlivable, and now used for storage) and a garage (big enough to drive a semi in on one side) full of junk… He has a emotional attachment to all of it, that and he’s convinced that most of it is worth $1000’s… He’s completely controlled by this junk. He’s also mentally ill. You’re not. You’ve figured out that it’s time to let some of it go. That’s a step forward. As others have pointed out your can collection is probably a good place to start. I’d keep maybe about a dozen of the rarest, and take pics of the rest and put them on a flash drive, and get rid of them… The memories you have of you and your father getting those cans will still be with you, they’re in you, not in the can, the can is a trigger. It’ll be difficult, But,you can’t let yourself be controlled by a collection, you have to live your life, you have to move forward. Another way of looking at it, What will happen to this stuff if something happens to you? Aside from the firearms, who is going to sort through all of it? you know as well as I, in that situation, the cans and the films are going out to the curb, first. So, it may as well be you who decides what goes, now, while you have some direction over it. I know you say you “collect” by choice, and that you’re limited by room, But, I’d also tell you my step-son says almost the same thing… He buys stuff at auctions by “choice”, and says he has a “use” for everything he buys… and the pile keeps getting larger. I’m not saying you’re a hoarder, But all hoarders started somewhere, with something… Steyr, I’ve read a lot of your posts on this board, you’re a smart man, The fact you’re questioning hanging on to some of this stuff shows that. You’ve got some difficult choices to make, and it’s not going to be easy, But as Confucius once said “A trip of a 1000 miles begins with the first step”. Remember, we’re here to help, all you have to do is ask.

18

Once again, you prove you’re my brother from another mother. I have many of the same issues - coupled with the fact that I now own the original family home. My reloading bench is the one my grandfather built in 1960 using wood from HIS grandparents’ barn, I use grandpa’s handloading press and other tools as well as my own, and I have a chest here full of V-mail from grandpa to great-grandpa and other artifacts like that. I was thinking to myself just yesterday, I have some REALLY nice and useful shit, some of it in its third generation of use, and no kids or nieces/nephews who would appreciate or understand it. I don’t want kids either, for the same reasons you cite…but it would be cool to have someone who wants this stuff as bad as I did when I was a kid learning to handload at the same bench where I assemble my match ammo today.

I don’t know what the answer is.

19

Ask if “stuff” is your master or your servent. If it is your master, then you have a problem. Nothing wrong with having things, but you need to recognize where on the priority list they belong.

I went through this too with some stuff until I had an epiphany: if I die today, do I want my kids having to deal with dad’s crap? Or does it become a generational curse because of en emotional obligation to me?

20

Choose carefully what you REALLY want to keep, get rid of everything else at a convenient pace, and don’t look back. Don’t worry too much, probably a person like you will soon find himself again in the same situation.

Once you discard/sell/give away these least precious things and move forward, you’ll feel liberated. Perhaps you’ll miss some stuff in the future, but not as much as you think you will. Life is a continous changing cycle.

I have a wife and three small kids that keep me from overthinking small stuff.